Cultural Diversity in the British Middle Ages: Archipelago, Island, England (The New Middle Ages)

Through close readings of both familiar and obscure medieval texts, the contributors to this volume attempt to read England as a singularly powerful entity within a vast geopolitical network. This capacious world can be glimpsed in the cultural flows connecting the Normans of Sicily with the rulers of England, or Chaucer with legends arriving from Bohemia. It can also be seen in surprising places in literature, as when green children are discovered in twelfth-century Yorkshire or when Welsh animals begin to speak of the long history of their land s colonization. The contributors to this volume seek moments of cultural admixture and heterogeneity within texts that have often been assumed to belong to a single, national canon, discovering moments when familiar and bounded space erupt into unexpected diversity and infinite realms. Cover 1 Contents 9 Acknowledgments 11 Introduction: Infinite Realms 12 1 Between Diaspora and Conquest: Norman Assimilation in Petrus Alfonsi’s Disciplina Clericalis and Marie de France’s Fables 28 2 Reliquia: Writing Relics in Anglo-Norman Durham 49 3 Cultural Difference and the Meaning of Latinity in Asser’s Life of King Alfred 67 4 Green Children from Another World, or the Archipelago in England 84 5 Beyond British Boundaries in the Historia Regum Britanniae 104 6 Arthur’s Two Bodies and the Bare Life of the Archives 125 7 The Instructive Other Within: Secularized Jews in The Siege of Jerusalem 143 8 Subversive Histories: Strategies of Identity in Scottish Historiography 160 9 Sleeping with an Elephant: Wales and England in the Mabinogion 180 10 Chaucer and the War of the Maidens 197 11 The Signs and Location of a Flight (or Return?) of Time: The Old English Wonders of the East and the Gujarat Massacre 215 List of Contributors 236 Index 238 A 238 B 238 C 239 D 240 E 240 F 240 G 240 H 241 I 241 J 241 K 242 L 242 M 242 N 243 O 243 P 243 Q 243 R 243 S 243 T 244 U 244 V 244 W 244 Y 245 Z 245 Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction: Infinite Realms....Pages 1-16 Between Diaspora and Conquest: Norman Assimilation in Petrus Alfonsi’s Disciplina Clericalis and Marie de France’s Fables....Pages 17-37 Reliquia: Writing Relics in Anglo-Norman Durham....Pages 39-56 Cultural Difference and the Meaning of Latinity in Asser’s Life of King Alfred....Pages 57-73 Green Children from Another World, or the Archipelago in England....Pages 75-94 Beyond British Boundaries in the Historia Regum Britanniae....Pages 95-115 Arthur’s Two Bodies and the Bare Life of the Archives....Pages 117-134 The Instructive Other Within: Secularized Jews in the Siege of Jerusalem....Pages 135-151 Subversive Histories: Strategies of Identity in Scottish Historiography....Pages 153-172 Sleeping with an Elephant: Wales and England in the Mabinogion....Pages 173-189 Chaucer and the War of the Maidens....Pages 191-208 The Signs and Location of a Flight (or Return?) of Time: The Old English Wonders of the East and the Gujarat Massacre....Pages 209-229 Back Matter....Pages 231-240 The contributors to this volume seek moments of cultural admixture and heterogeneity within texts that have often been assumed to belong to a single, national canon, discovering moments when familiar and bounded space erupt into unexpected diversity and infinite realms."--Jacket Through close readings of both familiar and obscure medieval texts, contributors read England as a single and powerful entity within a vast geopolitical network